The Kyoto Protocol allows international emissions trading, which could take place in three different forms: government, permit, or credit trading. Which trading system is chosen is likely to depend on the preferences of several interest groups. In this paper, we give empirical evidence on the...

Almost all economic and public choice models assume that all people are exclusively pursuing their own material self-interests and do not care about "social" goals per se. Several (laboratory) experiments address the question of the general validity of this assumption. A consistent conclusion...

This paper deals with risk and uncertainties that are an inherent part of designing and implementing fisheries rebuilding plans. Such risk and uncertainties stem from a variety of sources, biological, economic and/or political factors, and are influenced by external factors like changing...

Why did the climate negotiations in The Hague fail? Our contribution is to argue that the conflict between the European Union and the United States stems mainly from disagreement on the cost issue. We argue that three main concerns promoted by the European Union in The Hague, i.e. a 50% national...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the presence of Hot Air trading jeopardizes the environmental target of an international environmental agree-ment. We argue that Hot Air can be used as an implicit side-payment mecha-nism to actually bring about higher environmental protection...

Based on the political support function model by Hillman (1982), we consider the choice of policy instruments in environmental regulation. More specifically, we extend the Hillman model so that it can incorporate the connection between the relative strength of lobby groups, the chosen level of...

Our theoretical model suggests that ‘bureaucratisation’ is a potential threat to future economic growth in the EU. The bureaucratic incentives to budget maximize leads to overwhelming pressure for new administrative tasks because bureaucracies are competing for resources just like fishermen...

The EU Commission has recently proposed a new directive establishing a framework for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading within the European Union. The idea is to devalue the emission quotas in circulation by the year 2012 at latest, so that the EU will meet its Kyoto target level of an 8%...

Why has the EU been so eager to continue the climate negotiations? Can it be solely attributed to the EU feeling morally obliged to be the main initiator of continued progress on the climate change negotiations, or can industrial inter-ests in the EU, at least partly, explain the behaviour of...